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The facade and skyline. (Courtesy SHoP & JDS Development Group via 6sqft)

Despite concerns that New York City’s high-end housing bubble is about to burst, the supertall towers that have come to symbolize that upper-echelon of the market keep coming, one after the other. Now, with One57 open, and 432 Park topped off, SHoP’s 111 W. 57th Street—widely seen as the most attractive of the bunch—is preparing to head skyward. As the tower begins its roughly 1,400-foot climb, new renderings and details of the project have surfaced.

UPDATE [3:00 P.M.]: Related now has control of the Spire site, after embattled developer Garrett Kelleher transferred the deed Monday night. Related withdrew their claim in U.S. Bankruptcy Court following the transfer, reported the Chicago Tribune. They haven’t released plans for development or sale of the notorious site, but President Curt Bailey issued this statement:

We are pleased to have resolution on 400 N. Lake Shore Drive, the site of the former Chicago Spire project. We recognize the importance of this site to the City of Chicago and look forward to creating an architecturally significant and thoughtful development befitting this premier location. We are proud to have a long track-record of developing landmark buildings with world-class architects like 840 N. Lake Shore Drive, 500 N. Lake Shore Drive, Park Tower, 340 on the Park and most recently, 111 W. Wacker Drive. We look forward to continuing that legacy on this marquee site.

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Halloween came and went last Friday, and with it so may have developer Garrett Kelleher’s chance at reviving the Chicago Spire, an ambitious supertall project that faltered during the recession and left an empty cofferdam at 400 North Lake Shore Drive. Read More

Hurricane Sandy is bearing down on New York and New Jersey, and the current 55 to 60 mile an hour wind gusts tearing through Central Park have already taken their toll on Manhattan’s starchitecture, partially collapsing the construction crane at Christian de Portzamparc’s supertall One57 tower on West 57th Street.

Many details of BIG's supertall tower in Tianjin are still shrouded in mystery. (Courtesy BIG)

Bjarke Ingels, architect of mountains, now has set his eyes on Everest. The New York and Copenhagen-based architect’s firm BIG has been tapped by the Rockefellers to design one of the world’s tallest buildings at 1,929 feet for a new commercial development in Tianjin, China, a city of nearly 13 million people. Ingels revealed a cryptic, fog-shrouded rendering of the tower on his web site—indicative of the scarcity of detail yet released on the tower—but this being the information age, AN found more information and views of the tower on a clear day.

A “supertall” building is one which tops out at over 1,250 feet. Right now, there are 18 completed supertall buildings and 21 under construction. Chicago-based architects Skidmore, Owings, and Merrill (SOM) will break ground on Tuesday on the 1,740-foot-tall CTF Tower in Tianjin, China. It will be the tenth supertall building to begin construction for SOM, the most of any firm in the world. The building is a carefully-crafted design which deliberately merges structural challenges with program and form.

It’s Parametric. ArchDaily posts an intriguing project from Bucharest, Romania: the Hexigloo pavilion designed by architecture students. Under the supervision of instructors Tudor Cosmatu, Irina Bogdan, and Andrei Radacanu, 55 students learned basic parametric design principles and over the course of one week built a striking honeycomb structure of cardboard funnels.

Spantastic.The Guardian reports the opening of the world’s longest sea-crossing bridge that spans the Jiaozhou Bay in China. After four years and roughly £1.4 billion, the bridge makes possible commuting between cities Qingdao and Huangdao in a region southeast of Beijing. Look forward to another, even longer, bridge opening in 2015 that will connect the Guangdong province to Hong Kong and Macau.

Supertallest. The Council on Tall Buildings and Urban Habitat awarded Adrian Smith an honor of lifetime achievement for his work in the realm of the supertall. Bustler highlights Smith’s work on some of the world’s tallest completed buildings: Dubai’s Burj Khalifa, Nanjing’s Zifeng Tower at Nanjing Greenland Financial Center, Chicago’s Trump International Hotel & Tower, and Shanghai’s Jin Mao Tower while at Skidmore, Owings & Merrill.

Swiss Watch. Treehugger shares news from Zurich: the city is developing a project called OpenSense that will allow buses and other infrastructure systems, including mobile phone networks, to monitor air quality.